


Vague, Dark Spaces filled with Smoke

by AstronautSquid



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Awkward First Times, Daddy Issues, M/M, Pre-Movie, Shotgunning, Smoking, late nights at the Shatterdome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>„You should always be considerate of cripples.“</p><p>For a moment Hermann waited, letting the silence assert itself and then be cut to pieces by the wind. Then he said, „That must be why no one asks me to pilot a Jaeger or you to do the mental weight-lifting around here.“</p><p>---------</p><p>A late night at the Shatterdome leads to a sharing of various things between two unlikely candidates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vague, Dark Spaces filled with Smoke

The Shatterdome was never silent, even in the latest hours of the night. It was a place where _late_ and _early_ ran into each other so seamlessly that they came to mean the same thing: vague, dark spaces out of which even more work hours could be mined, sleepy coals turned in for caffeine diamonds.

Hermann preferred a regular sleeping rhythm by far, but the nightly song of dull pain in his bad leg prevented well-rested nights more often than not these days, and when hadn't he been able to abandon his bed in favour of another hour or two poring over equations?

Despite the clockwork sound bursts of nocturnal work the corridors were almost deserted and his progress was accompanied by a ghostly marching band thump-a- _step_ , thump-a- _step_ ping with him. As he walked he fumbled with the collar of his shirt, one button undone. The only reason he had made the journey to his room had been to fetch another jumper. One more layer between his body and the nightly chill, between Hermann Gottlieb and the world.

Said chill raked through his hair now, without warning, curling cat-like around his shoulders and trying to purr goosebumps down onto his spine. He merely halted and leaned his cane against his hip while he closed the topmost button of his shirt, looking around for the source of the draught. A door left ajar to his left.

„Don't shut it, okay?“

His hand, already outstretched for the handle, stilled and he looked up into the face of Chuck Hansen, just visible through the crack in the door. A pinprick of orange light caught Hermann's eye, hovering at hip height in the darkness beyond.

„Ah.“ Chuck pulled a face that was as close to sheepish as Hermann had ever seen it. „Caught me. Maybe close the door after all, don't want my Dad to catch a whiff of this.“

A puff of smoke carried his chuckle into Hermann's nose. After considering his options for a second – go on, return to the lab and see if Newt's experiments had managed to crawl into his side of the room again – he did close the door, but not before slipping through into the darkness.

The night wind rushed into his ears and up his sleeves before Hermann pulled at the hems. He thought he a look of surprise on Chuck's face but his eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness yet, lit up only nominally by a green exit sign above the door, and Chuck's astonishment couldn't be great enough to last until they did.

„So this is what you do on your nights off?“ Hermann asked and looked around. They were on a platform, a broad ledge overlooking the bay, just sparsely shielded from the incoming breeze by a protruding corner of the building.

„Sometimes.“ Chuck shrugged and took a drag from the cigarette, burning a little brighter like an exhilarated firefly. „Not much else to do, is there? This,“ he lifted the cigarette, „is the one vice I can have. Sort of. In secret. Fuck me if my old man ever catches me out partying or something, not to mention that I don't have enough free time to sneak away for that shit. But cigarettes only earn me a slap on the wrist, I guess. Bad for me 'n' shit.“

„Where did you get them anyway?“ Hermann inquired.

Chuck shrugged again.

„The Russians. Say what you want, but at least saving the world pays enough to buy you quite a few packages of light-up lung cancer.“

He strolled over to a blocky air vent to sit down – but then he noticed Hermann hesitating. Just for a second, before limping after him. He rose again.

„Uh, you sit down, I guess,“ he said and gestured vaguely towards the square of cement and metal. It was the only spot around to sit down.

Hermann was almost stunned for a second, words clinging to the back of his tongue about the rude little prick apparently having a sense of common decency after all, but he regained his composure immediately and lowered himself onto the vent. A little awkward with the weight shift but he had enough practice.

„Thank you,“ he said, adjusting his position to take the strain off his bad leg.

Chuck made a throwaway gesture.

„'S okay,“ he said, taking another drag. „You should always be considerate of cripples.“

For a moment Hermann waited, letting the silence assert itself and then be cut to pieces by the wind.

Then he said, „That must be why no one asks me to pilot a Jaeger or you to do the mental weight-lifting around here.“

Chuck blinked, shadows swallowing up his eyes, _oncetwicethrice_.

„I can't even be offended at that, can I.“

„I advise you not to.“

Chuck had the decency to twist his finger tips around the cigarette butt in what appeared to be shame. It lasted only for a second but there it was. _Wonders will never cease_ , Hermann thought in the privacy of his brain.

Another bout of wind ruffled Chuck's blonde hair, a dirty blonde like a mutt's scruffy fur, and when he looked at Hermann again the emergency exit sign's glow was caught in his brows and on the tip of his nose and along his cheek bones, and the shadows pooling in the creases of his eyes made them seem larger than usual.

_So young._

The thought latched onto Hermann like hands descending onto his shoulders from the dark and twisted around the place where his scapula met the collarbone; that raven's beak of a bone. He was glad when Chuck was the next to speak because for a second he wasn't sure how to process this revelation that shouldn't have been a revelation in the first place.

„You want the last one?“ Chuck proffered the cigarette to Hermann; Hermann hadn't even noticed that the first one had gone out and disappeared.

„No.“

„Suit yourself.“ Chuck shrugged and, placing the cigarette between his lips, held carefully by chapped skin, cupped the lighter with one hand to shield the flame from the wind. „I don't see the point in not doing it,“ he went on, puffing. „I mean, I don't go to parties, I don't have friends to distract me, I haven't even got a driver's license, I don't have a fucking girlfriend. Hell, I'm a bloody _monk_.“ He let out a long stream of smoke. „How's a guy _supposed_ to get laid if he doesn't know any-fucking-body?“

He gave Hermann a sideways glance.

„I'm saying this because I know you won't rat me out,“ he added. „If only because I can outrun you with your goddamn limp anytime.“

Hermann twitched the corners of his mouth, amusement frozen wry in the folds of skin.

„You are a downright prick,“ he said in the tone of voice which he usually reserved for talking someone slow through an equation. „And I would thump you with my cane or give your ears a right boxing, young man, if I didn't know you're merely young and green and frustrated and _afraid_.“

The last few words came out less stern than they were supposed to, bit off every few syllables by his chattering teeth. Instead of answering Chuck shuffled around in the shadows and then a thick, warm layer of darkness descended over Hermann's shoulders like night spun into wool. He felt warmer immediately, the familiar-but-not-intimate smell of the jacket enveloping him. It smelled of sweat, of the handful of dog treats making one of the inner pockets bulge, and faintly of black-market aftershave.

Turning to face the bay, hip leaning against a pipe protruding from the concrete, Chuck took another drag.

„Goddamn Mako's father was a swordmaker,“ he exhaled on plumes of smoke.

„ _And_ dead,“ Hermann added. His chalk-dusted fingers burrowed into the plush lining of the jacket, something fuzzy and soft, leaving traces that he couldn't see in the dark.

„And her adoptive father is the bloody Marshal himself.“ Chuck shrugged as if trying to dislodge a spider between his shoulder blades. „Perfect kill count in the simulator. Fifty-one drops, fifty-one kills. And she's upgraded that Jaeger – Gipsy Danger, is it?“

 _As if you don't know_ , Hermann thought. _As if you don't grind your teeth every time you hear the name_. But he didn't say anything, merely stared out across the bay where neon lights regarded their own wavering twins on the water below.

„She's upgraded the thing with a _sword_. A bloody sword. Making her father proud. _Both_ of her fathers proud. A memorial to fend for humanity.“ He spat. „There's nothing I can ever achieve that could be bigger than what my old man and I do together now. If we get out of this alive, there's nothing I can ever do on my own that will outshine our work together. Live or die through this, but this is it. This is the peak.“

Hermann felt a sudden ache to be inside, to be back in the lab with the chalkboard so close in front of him he could taste the chalk dust silky-choking-sweet at the back of his throat; to listen to Newt waffle on about kaiju entrails and try to strike up conversations when it was way past his bedtime. Back to his numbers.

Instead, Hermann sighed. He could hardly hear it himself over the wind that carried his breath away with it.

„At least you and your father work for the same side.“

Chuck's head snapped up abruptly. „Your Dad works for the _kaiju_?“

Just barely resisting the urge to whack the Australian with his cane after all, Hermann merely thumped it on the ground in annoyance.

„He works for the Pacific Perimeter Program. He started out with the PPDC but switched over when the funding was starting to get cut; the UN pays a lot better than an independent, private organization like us. I started working for Pentecost partly to impress my father for once. If it's any consolation, I haven't talked to him in years, but I am assured by my family that I remain a grave disappointment to him.“

Chuck stared at him while he flicked away some ash, crumbling softly away into the night.

„Your old man sounds like a _dick_ ,“ he said at length. „I mean – I'm not too close with mine, it's his fault after all that Mum -“ He seemed to choke on the last word and hastily puffed on the cigarette before carrying on. „But anyway, at least I know objectively that he's doing the right thing and doing a good job, all things considered.“ He ran a hand through his hair, which didn't improve the state it was in but couldn't actually make it much worse, either. „I know what everyone thinks – how can a guy like him end up with a son like _me_?“

„Not everyone.“

„No?“

Hermann snorted. „From where I stand you're both brash and entirely unscientific, you like to throw tantrums and shout a lot, think an awful lot of yourselves and are very good at what you do. And you're both caught up in complexes and mudslinging that should be beneath two such extraordinary men as you.“

The coolness was seeping into his bad leg; the circulation below his left hip was weaker than the right, but he somehow didn't feel like going inside just yet. Chuck stood with one foot hooked behind the other in what would have passed for uncertainty on any other twenty-one-year-old but looked more like a pose from a Sergio Leone film from him.

The cigarette was about halfway burnt up. Hermann gestured towards it.

„I think I want that smoke after all,“ he said. „Might as well try it.“

Chuck's face opened in surprise, looking more like a schoolboy than a battle-hardened pilot.

„You've never had a smoke? At all? And you're what, bloody forty?“

„Thirty-five,“ Hermann corrected him tetchily. „And intending to get a whole lot older yet. But I suppose one mouthful of smoke can't hurt, now that the world is ending and everything. In the name of _bloody_ scientific curiosity, so to speak.“

A grin spread across Chuck's face, caught somewhere between mocking and disbelieving, but it glowed with sincerity all over for once as he uncrossed his feet.

„Not much left in this one,“ he said, holding up the glowing cigarette for evidence. „Guess we'll have to share.“

And with steps that seemed too light and mischievous for the taunting, self-absorbed, unscientific bully that he was, Chuck stepped in front of Hermann, bent down and carefully, ever so carefully, placed the cigarette wrong side out between his teeth, its butt end pointing towards Hermann.

It was way too late for this kind of nonsense, particularly for a man of his age and high opinion of himself, but Hermann didn't say a word before he leant in and closed his lips around the cigarette.

The first thing he thought was that it was confusing; was he supposed to bring his lips all the way to Chuck's or focus on sucking the smoke in? How deeply should he inhale and for how long? And what was the general procedure on closing your eyes in this situation? Was there a policy on whether or not Hermann was supposed to squint at Chuck's shadowed face while he felt the smoke ghost down his throat?

Then one of them must have bitten through the cigarette by accident because Chuck released it abruptly and Hermann let it fall from his lips in a last glimmer farewell, but he wasn't left for long wondering whether he had gotten ash on his clothes, because the cigarette was gone but Chuck's mouth was still there.

Chuck's sole plan of attack seemed to have been to press forward and – there it stopped already. Hermann felt him hanging there, as if trying his best to hold a money bill between their closed lips, afraid to pull back but equally uncertain what to do next.

Hermann decided to oblige him by opening his mouth and letting him explore while smoke rose from the corners of his mouth and was caught behind his glasses until tears welled up in his eyes; and because it was hard to exhale properly with the younger man's – good God, he was _fourteen_ desperate years younger – tobacco-flavoured tongue in his mouth, Hermann ended up choking on the smoke, just a bit.

Reflexively his hands clawed into the plush lining of the jacket, draped around his shoulders still, and they found another hand there, half-familiar strangers catching on crooked fingers in the dark. The fourth hand was already fumbling with the entrapments of his trousers and, sliding inside, Hermann's gasp was equally of long deprivation and astonishment at how much those warm fingers _shook_.

It was all quite awkward, really, what with gritty bits of tobacco still floating around in Hermann's mouth – surely that had to be a bit unhygienic? - and a thread of saliva on his chin that cooled unpleasantly in the chill but that he couldn't wipe away, and Chuck leaning in for another lip-lock but bumping his nose into Hermann's glasses because he was trying so hard, working him at this awkward angle, half bent over for his face to be level with Hermann's.

As for Hermann, he came eventually with ragged bands of sobbing breath fraying out of his mouth while he unravelled; amidst inarticulated jerks and the sloppy slick-slap contrast between hot skin and cool night air. He hunched over violently, pressing the top of his head into the warm solidity of Chuck's stomach, one hand closing vice-like around the younger man's wrist, the other's fingernails digging into the flesh of Chuck's idle hand.

He was acutely aware of the loud clatter of his cane rolling off his knees and falling to the ground; of the stickiness as trembling fingers retreated and left him vulnerably exposed to the night, limp and spent, and Chuck's heavy breathing above him.

Hermann felt the heave of the younger man's chest against his face, drifting back into focus while he willed his own lungs to slow somewhat. One of Chuck's hands – God, they were _large_ hands, a pilot's hands, meant for work and hardship, for breaking things – was shoved into Hermann's hair, curving along his scalp.

He could feel him trembling still.

 _Well._ Finding a small edge of reason somewhere in his mind, Hermann tried to assess the situation from a logical standpoint, for whatever good it might do. He couldn't very well _not_ return the favour, not after all this.

Carefully he disentangled one of his hands from the jacket – it had cramped so hard that the joints actually hurt a little as he stretched them – and reached up. He couldn't see anything but it seemed to end up on the side of Chuck's neck. There was a hitch and a sound from Chuck that sounded rather undignified for a young man of his age and testosterone levels.

It didn't take Hermann very long to find out why: the fingers that he carefully slid into the front of Chuck's trousers met softening flesh and sticky heat, congealing between skin and fabric.

„Ah,“ Hermann said.

Chuck pushed him back by the shoulder, almost knocking Hermann over as he retreated as if stung. Hermann couldn't see it in the green glow of the exit sign but he was quite certain Chuck's face was glowing like an Australian sunburn – he imagined he could feel the heat radiate through the darkness.

Discomfort rose in his chest at the state of his clothes and the sticky unorderliness of all this and he began fumbling for the two handkerchiefs – he liked to err on the side of caution – in his pockets. He held one out for Chuck and it glowed like a tiny ghost between them.

„So this is what it's like to smoke,“ he tried to lighten the situation while sickly-sweet-thin desperation was winding through this guts at the thought that he, _Hermann Gottlieb_ , was the one trying to make post-handjob chatter happen. „Well, I suppose it's a learning curve for the both of us.“

Hermann had known that Chuck's favourite weapons were his sharp tongue and his fists, but he had never suspected him to wield silence with the same edge. He didn't say a word as he cleaned himself up hastily and tossed the handkerchief over the edge of the concrete ledge, where the wind tore it out of sight immediately. Hermann almost began to fear being tossed after it next, but then Chuck merely stepped away when Hermann rose shakily, and he bent down and picked up his cane that had rolled a short way.

„One word of this to _anyone_ ,“ he hissed but none of the harshness carried into his hands as he pressed the cane into Hermann's open fingers.

„You said it yourself,“ Hermann said, trying to balance his weight between the cane and two still-shaky legs. „You can outrun me with my goddamn limp anytime.“

Chuck's face dropped open again, just for a second, as his gaze triangulated between Hermann's eyes and his cane and his bad leg and his eyes again.

„Yeah,“ he said then and shoved his fists into his pockets with such emphasis that Hermann was surprised that his trousers didn't fall right down off his hips.

„Well,“ Hermann said and licked his dry-as-smoke lips. His mouth still tasted like tobacco. Vile substance, that. „Good evening, then.“

Because he couldn't think of anything less stiff and grown-up to say to this bundle of anger and nerves and hormones and complexes.

It was only when he had almost reached the door that Hermann noticed that Chuck's jacket was still draped around his shoulders. Painfully aware of his sore legs – it had been a long day _and_ night – and Chuck's gaze both he hobbled back.

„Thank you for sharing,“ he said as he held out the jacket and felt the night chill envelop his body, pawing with unbearable patience at the slight sheen of sweat beneath his clothes.

„Sharing what?“ Chuck didn't put the jacket on immediately; _bunch_ it went in his too-large hands. „Jacket, smoke, sob-stories about daddy issues? Goddamn third-rate handjob?“

Hermann couldn't see Chuck's eyes very well in the sparse lighting. He was glad about it, to be honest – he was afraid of seeing sincerity or vulnerability there, which he had never asked for but would have deserved for getting unnecessarily involved with people again when numbers had proven to be the one emotionally safe and stable alternative.

„Take your pick,“ he said finally and made his way – darkness, green exit sign, hallway light – inside without looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know how this happened. I wanted to write a talk between Hermann, Chuck and possibly Mako about their respective daddy issues. This is what came out instead.
> 
> That said, I guess this is the first smut I've actually put online. Go me.
> 
> No beta, no regrets.


End file.
